October 5, 2000

WHY ARE NEGOTIATIONS NOT OVER NOW THAT THEY HAVE OFFERED US 20%?

In providing a 20% increase in the amount of money allocated to MUNFA members' salaries, the administration's salary offer would go a considerable way towards closing the salary gap between MUN and comparable Canadian universities. This makes all the more disturbing the implications of the salary structure they have proposed. Also, the administration seems to believe that with their salary offer the negotiations are virtually complete, that MUNFA should be willing to yield on remaining language issues.

What are the main problems with the administration's salary proposal?

The largest salary increase in the administration's proposal would not occur until two years into the Collective Agreement. This would even further delay the payment of nationally comparable salaries to most members. The following table shows the differing effects on salary of MUNFA's front-end loaded and MUN's back-end loaded proposals. The administration's back-end loaded proposal would also have a deleterious effect on the pensions of those Academic Staff Members who retire in the next few years.

The overall averages at the end of the Collective Agreement are virtually the same, yet the MUNFA proposal, by raising salaries earlier, would put much more money into the pockets of our members since the increase of $6497 is paid out not only in 1999-2000, but also in all subsequent years. The difference between $6497 and $1299 is $5198 per year. We have waited long enough for a salary increase.

The administration salary proposal would significantly disadvantage fully one quarter of MUNFA members, particularly in Nursing, Fine Arts, Music, and the libraries. These are areas where, until very recently, doctorates were uncommon, or, as in Fine Arts, unavailable. Such disadvantaging will be experienced disproportionately by women who hold many positions in these fields. The following table compares the impact on male and female salaries of the MUN and MUNFA salary proposals.

The administration would delink the per course pay from the salary scale. They insist that the per course rate will remain at $3519, a figure unchanged since 1989. This rate would affect sessional appointees and the compensation for overload teaching.

The delay in the date when the largest salary increase is effective, coupled with the administration's continued unwillingness to negotiate early retirement incentives, would create a powerful disincentive to early retirement, and impose a large and continuing cost on the institution. Colleagues now considering early retirement would be strongly motivated to stay, waiting for salary increases that would appreciably increase their pensions. Instead of being able to replace these colleagues now, with new hires receiving lower salaries, the University would find itself paying their higher salaries longer. And, in the second half of this decade, at a time when it will be even more difficult to replace them, the University would experience a drastic and sudden loss of faculty and librarians.

The administration's proposal includes a clause stating that "No ASM's Basic Annual Salary shall be lowered as a result of the implementation of this article." It is therefore explicit that market differentials, which are not part of the Basic Annual Salary, can be lowered by the administration at any time. MUNFA's proposal, on the contrary, builds all existing market differentials permanently into an ASM's salary [Clause 30.16#5u(i), (ii) and (iii)].

The average salary increase for colleagues with market differentials would be 22.6%. For those without market differentials it would be 19.8%. The administration has acknowledged the problem of compression and inversion, a situation in which the salaries of newer hires approach or exceed those of longer serving faculty. Rather than alleviating this problem, the administration proposal makes it worse.

Without any attempt to deal with MUNFA's proposal for pension reform, MUN's salary offer makes the prospect of indexing recede into the murky distance of unspecified and interminable "discussion." Furthermore, based on prior experience, we can expect more unilateral pension holidays where the money is used by the administration to cover part of its operating expenses. For those of us who invested in the University Forum and its commitment to faculty renewal, a commitment not reflected in the MUN salary proposal, this promise of "talk" seems nothing short of cynicism masking itself as collegial input.

MUNFA has had to negotiate for one full year in order to get the administration to table a salary proposal. It has had to go through the conciliation process. The conciliation officer has had to report to the Minister that negotiations had reached an impasse, an action that set in motion a process by which we can now take a strike vote. Concurrently with MUNFA requesting conciliation, the MUNFA Executive put in place a Job Action Committee to deal with the contingency of a strike. It was then and only then that the administration tabled its salary proposal. Negotiations have now resumed under the auspices of a conciliation officer, but the process set in motion when the conciliation officer reported to the Minister that negotiations had reached an impasse are still operating.

Despite our lengthy and difficult negotiations over the past year, a multitude of language issues remain outstanding. Unfortunately, it is becoming apparent from the administration's attitudes at the negotiating table that the administration, having made this salary offer, believes not only that the salary issue is settled, but that it can extract major concessions on most other outstanding matters -- workload, pension plan reform, academic freedom and non-discrimination, collegial processes and governance, occupational health and safety, maternity and paternity leave, discipline, academic programme redundancies, and the appointment and review of academic administrators.

Given the apparent intransigence of the administration at the table, it seems to the Negotiating Committee that, without the support of the membership, MUNFA's ability to represent the interests of all its members and to bring negotiations to a successful conclusion on all the outstanding issues (financial and language) will be seriously compromised.

MUNFA Negotiating Committee:

• Bill Schrank (Economics) - Chief Negotiator
• John Bear (Medicine)
• Elizabeth Browne (Library)
• Jon Church (Medicine)
• Malcolm Grant (Psychology)
• Clar Matchim (Business)
• Eric Mintz (SWGC)
• Jim Overton (Sociology)
• Elizabeth Yeoman (Education)
• Chris Youé (History)
• Marian Atkinson (MUNFA Executive Officer, non-voting member)

All issues of Negotiating News are accessible at http://www.mun.ca/munfa/negnews.html